KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Mastering the Market Mike's Foolproof Strategies for Real Estate Success!

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now.

Hey, everybody's Kathy Burns here with Real Estate Riches. And today I have my guest, Mike Smoligan, and he is from Michigan, my former state that I'm from. How are you, Mike? I'm great, Kathy. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be part of your podcast. Yes. I love having different people, especially, you know, it's fun to talk to somebody from your home state. Yeah.

I moved away 20 years ago. I don't miss the snow because we're doing this in January. I don't miss the snow because it's been very cold here. Anyway, tell us a little bit about you, Mike. I know you got a team there with KW. Sure, yeah. So I've been in real estate since 2013. Before real estate, I actually was in the wireless phone business. So I owned a couple small cell phone stores, AT&T, Sprint, that kind of thing. And, you know, managing employees was part of that, but it wasn't as enjoyable as I would have liked it to be. Because you never get people that are as committed as you are to building and growing. And so, yeah, AT&T asked us to update our store fixtures. And that was kind of my sign, like, hey, I'm really not feeling investing in new store fixtures.

So I said, I'm going to do something different. And real estate was always something that I looked at as an option for me. I tried to get into real estate twice prior to that. And both times I was told, you're too young. When I was 20, actually, 22, we'll go with that. I responded to a newspaper ad. And I went in and the guy said, what's your experience with selling? And I was like, well, I've had a few sales jobs, blah, blah, blah.

And he's like, do you have any money saved up? And I was like, a little, maybe a paycheck or two at that point. And he's like, well, you know, maybe you should wait a few years because people your age don't buy houses and people that do buy houses don't buy them from people your age. And I listened to him and I stayed out for another almost 10 years. And then when I was 32, I decided to make the plunge and get into real estate. And I had a lot of conversations. So when I first got into real estate, I didn't know a lot. And you go into every brokerage. And they're basically like, like, we'll hire you, we'll hire you, right? And I went in and interviewed with a team, and it wasn't that way. It was more of like, hey, what are you going to bring to the team? This is what we offer. We're not looking to hire everybody.

Like, tell us why you'd be a good fit on the team. And I was kind of taken back by that because, you know, every other person I talked to was like, hey, Mike, join us. Like, sign up. Here's the paperwork. Like, it was just too easy. And then the team I talked to was like, like, nope, this is the process we go through. There's two or three interviews. We don't just hire

everybody. And that's where I went. So I joined a team in 2013, learned a lot, and they had a lot. They were the number one team in Grand Rapids at that time, crushed it on social media before a lot of people were crushing on social media. There was a lot of good people to learn from. But then they made some mistakes, which you can learn from mistakes too, which I did. And maybe not always learning from your own mistakes, you can learn from other people. So, yeah, so I got in 2013 and the team made some mistakes and fell apart and then ended up selling off to a different company. So they sold the team to a different brokerage. They were independent at that time and then sold the company to a different brokerage. And I hung on for a while. And I was known as somebody that was good at converting. I cared about

the money we were spending on leads. I was good at converting the leads. I worked in the office every day. So they just said, hey, we have all these opportunities. We don't have a team anymore. How about we send them to you and you give us a referral fee for the opportunities? And that was kind of just dumb luck. Like, I mean, I don't think that's a thing I could have planned or thought about, right? Like they just said, hey, like, you've shown that you will treat these with respect. And and you're honest. And so we want you to continue to do that. And then also, you know, send us some referral fees when you close some deals. And that's what I did. And my first year in real estate, I did 35 transactions. And that was mainly on a team. Wow. My second year was not on a team

because the team fell apart at that point. We did about 50 transactions. And I needed help. I just, I was just busy. I hired an assistant. I hired a buyer's agent. And then we got to at that, we were still at the other company and we got to about five agents and one admin. And we just got to the point to where we felt like we weren't getting the support because that brokerage wasn't set up to help build a team. Right. So we decided as a team, like should we interview other brokerages and move our team to a different brokerage that will provide better support for new agents, and also us as we're growing a team. So one book that a lot of people look to when building a team is the millionaire real estate agent, right?

So that's like kind of a blueprint to build a team. Let's talk to Keller Williams. And we did. And 2018, we joined Keller Williams. We went from five agents to today, a team of 25. And we have seven admin, including myself, because that's a lot of what I do now is training and coaching and managing the back end. And then we have a operations manager who handles some of the management of the agents and the staff, but then also she does transaction coordinating for us too.

And just so much more than that, because I mean, she's a big part of why we are successful as the team. And we have a sales manager who does a lot of the agent accountability. And we have a marketing team now. So we have three marketing people that work with us to promote the agents themselves on social media. So it's not just the team that's promoted. we post on their personal social media platforms for them and create content for them.

We do in-house podcasts and Q&A sessions for them to be used on their social media. And I think that's one thing that makes us different and why we continue to good retention and grow is we don't look at it. It's just us as a team. It's us as individuals that all have business that they want to run or do. And nobody wants to be just like a nameplate. Everybody wants to have their own personality and individuality is important to the team. Totally agree. Well, you said a lot of stuff in there.

Well, first of all, sorry about that. No, it was great because you treated it like a business right from the get-go from your perspective, even when they weren't doing it. You're giving so much to the agents that are on your team, even though you're within another franchise, let's say, you basically built your own business within that franchise. and you are running it like a business. I'm on a team myself, and I had my own team, but I'm a lot older than you,

and I didn't want to do the team business anymore. And actually, my partner had decided to go another path, and different things were happening in my life, and I was suddenly a single agent with an assistant, and then my assistant decided not to stay. So I was like, oh, man. And fortunately, the team that I was with, and this was at KW, or the firm that I was at,

one of the top teams asked me to be on their team. And just like you said, I like to be my own boss and they let me be my own boss. And yet they support me. And they do the marketing. They do this. And you know, the splits are according to that. You know, you give way more than our team does. And our team does a lot because we have a mentor for the new agents that are coming on.

We have an office manager who runs the whole show. We've got our TC that does all the documents and puts them in the MLS and gets all our appointments done. And we do a lot of social media, but we do that more on our own. And I like that you're doing that within the team. And you mentioned a strong word in their retention. Yeah. So last year, about 50% of our business came from Zillow. And I would like to get that number to be about a third of our business.

Zillow's a good source of leads, especially if you treat it with respect and accountability and really pay attention to what you're doing with those opportunities at Zillow's sending your way. But it's not getting cheaper. And we want, everybody has people they know. And I think, you know, it's tough to be the one holding the camera and holding yourself accountable to making videos because you're always like, I could have said that better or I was not looking my best or I had a pimple on my face or whatever, you know, like you, you get all self-conscious. And, you know, if you have somebody else holding the camera, you don't really get that. Like, yeah, like it's somebody else saying like, oh, we're going to do this and you look great. And you said that fine. And

we'll make it work. And the videos end up always looking great. So that's one thing we're doing is really just trying to help the agents build a business from the people they know already. And, you know, that helps us as a team as a whole. It helps bring our lead costs down. But then, you know, they see that we're not building our brand exclusively built. We're building theirs individually. So they appreciate that. And, you know, we do a few other things as far as retention. Agents on my team or our team are always listed first on every transaction, both buyers and sellers.

Everybody on the team is both working with buyers and sellers if they want to. And we also have a tiered commission system too, which the more transactions you do. So you do 20 transactions, that's a 50-50 split. you do 21 to 31, that's you get 60% and the team takes 40 and you do over 31 transactions, which five of our team agents did last year, they get 70%. And you only bump down one tier every year. So if those agents that made it up to the 30 or the, where they, 31 transactions, they're actually now all year getting 60% of the commission they generate for the team.

Oh, that's great. That's great. Well, that's definitely an incentive because, well, it's a business, too, for them. And they're working it so that they get that higher split. And you're offering so much on the team. Let me ask you this. I love that you're doing all that social media. How are you incorporating AI into your team, your business, and your PEEPS? So, I mean, I use AI for writing scripts. So generating ideas for videos. We use basically text-based AI. We're not using it for images or graphics or whatever. Most of the AI that we're using is strictly for improving our conversations and our dialogues. And I don't use, we've tried it, honestly. We've tried the AI texting and AI calling and stuff like that to our ponds. But I don't think our, everybody knows, you know when you get a call or a text from a robot. And the immediate thing you do is either ignore it or reply stop. So if we're getting text, if we're sending text and they're replying with the word stop, we're doing something wrong. So, because they feel it's a robot or it's too generic or unauthentic. Right. So, yeah, we're used in AI, but it's, you know, it's more for just improving the conversation,

improving the emails we're sending out, videos that we're doing, the ideas that we have. And it's more used by the marketing team. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of companies start out. And I agree with you, I don't like that robotic feel to it where it's no longer a human interaction. And I'm going in circles if I'm trying to have a conversation that makes me insane. I think that's all changing. And I think AI is changing at such a rapid pace that you have to stay current on it. But you're doing a lot of the right things. Well, clearly you are because your team is very successful. And you're being visible. Just like you and I talked earlier, you know, you try and be a guest on lots a podcast, I do too, because we want to be visible and we want people to recognize us.

And I believe that the agents that are not doing stuff like this, they're invisible. And we're going to have to pay for more and more leads, whereas you have the opportunity to work the sphere that you've built by creating that business of that database and that CRM that you're building of all those people. Do you do any client appreciation events with that database? Oh, we got to do better. So, I mean, as far as, you know, we, we have a booth at the Home and Garden show. We typically do, you know, as a team, I've been trying to encourage agents to do their own events.

And then the team will sponsor it or assist with it. But, you know, when we've ran or set them up as a team in the past, it's been pretty little agent input. You know, and then we get, you know, each person brings two or three people. But the ones that the team has done, so we just did one. one of the agents of my team did a, like a family photo thing where he invited his past clients to somewhere to take pictures. And it was pictures for Christmas cards. So, and that was pretty well attended. And the team, you know, ended up, you know, helping them out with that and sponsoring, you know, half of it. We typically are going to match what their current commission splits are. So

if they're getting 60, 40, then we'll pay 40% because. Well, that's a good idea. Yeah. So that's a great idea. I was talking to this one agent and she does a lot of events and I'm thinking, man, that's costly. But she gets sponsors for her events. And one of them she did a Santa event like that were the clients, all the agents, clients were invited to have pictures with Santa. But they did it at a friend's store where it was all set up.

It was like an interior decorator store. But there was lots of little knickknacks and stuff that could have been for sale. So the clients came. They got the free pictures. The kids got to come, have pictures with Santa. It was like for the Christmas cards, like you were saying. And then people went shopping at her store. So the store owner really paid for, I think, little knickknacks and stuff that they had.

They were careful with food because it was inside a store with clothes and knickknacks and stuff. But then the team just paid for Santa and the photographer. Yeah, so many different ways to do the business, right? Yeah, yeah. We believe in supporting the community. So we give back. So we support the Griffith Youth Foundation, which is a club that gives hockey to 500 kids in the Grand Rapids area. It's totally free of cost.

So last year we donated a couple hundred hockey helmets. We support their great skate event, which is their biggest fundraiser of the year. So we're their title sponsor on that. And we also run a Facebook page. So Grand Rapids Informed is one of our Facebook pages that has 147,000 people in it now. and we use that as a way to promote like local events that are happening, community events, news that affects the community. So we're putting out these articles on this page.

And then the community uses it as a resource to, you know, ask questions like who fixes this or does this or cuts hair, you know, used all different types of ways. That's a great idea. I started a couple of them. I have one called 365 things to do around like Norman because I live. by the lake here. And so I'm the only one that can post on it. And so I put different events that are going on all the time there. And but I also, during COVID, when all these little mom and pop stores were being brutalized with their businesses, I created a Facebook group called Support

Local Lake Norman. And everybody could post on there. Like we got coffee specials, we got clothing, we got whatever. And that was a big hit. And it's still a hit because I didn't stop either one of them. And I don't market on there myself. I even let other agents market on the support local because the truth is they're not going to hurt my business and I'm not going to hurt their business. So there's enough to go around. I love it when people have that mindset of, you know, givers gain, really. So that one of the most popular questions on that, Grant Rapids Inform pages, who's the best realtor or who's the best lender? I get mentioned sometimes. But I mean, it's comments are, those get, you know, three, 400 comments from everybody that knows a realtor.

And I think that's kind of cool that people like their realtor enough to recommend them to other people. Yeah. Yeah, that is cool. I like that a lot. Well, let's see. What about YouTube? Do you have a YouTube channel? I can't remember if I saw one for the team.

We do. Yep. So we just, I think recently we're at like 1,500 subscribers or so. Wow. And, yeah, that's kind of where we're. trying to focus. So we're putting out Grand Rapids focused videos all the time. We're putting out agent videos all the time. We're probably putting out like three to three to five videos a week on YouTube to there. There's a team I follow in Orlando. Shout out to Ken Posak, who is really done

well in the last like five years with YouTube. I went to one of his events and he actually said that last year of his $240 million. No, it was 400 million in sales. He did 240 from YouTube. So some crazy numbers like that. Strictly from, and with YouTube, he's actually getting paid for posting videos, not paying for leads.

So he's actually interviewed the mayor. He gets tickets to go to like X, the Disney World and I can't think of the name, Universal Studios. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. When they debut new rides, he's getting first in line because he's promoting. And because he's promoted his community so strongly. And that's kind of one of our goals, too, is to do a better job at that. So we can be in those conversations.

I love that. I love that. Our team does them primarily with, they're not doing that. I'm going to tell them to do that because that's a brilliant idea. They, he'll send the photographer out, the team owner. And he'll send a photographer out to go video the whole area of like a neighborhood. So you've got all the, because a lot of HOA's here. So you've got the whole neighborhood, all the things that are going on in the neighborhood,

the pool, the tennis courts, whatever, the waterfront. And then examples of houses, but not a specific house, right? And then he'll do a voiceover on it. So we've got a million videos on just about every single neighborhood that's in the area. And then it's all out on entertainment. Like we've got a rafting place here, water rafting that it's like an Olympic training area. That's amazing. And all the beer places, all the restaurants.

But he isn't doing it personal. It's more factual. And I think the personal piece of it is stronger. So when we first started our YouTube channel, the first videos we did were like 30 something videos. So 32 neighborhoods on the 32 or 32 videos in the 32 neighborhoods of Grand Rapids. So we did a video for each of the neighborhoods. And it was the kind of beginning of when we were doing videos. So I wasn't as confident on camera.

We basically did that. So we had some B-roll shot. There was a little bit of us in person kind of introducing the neighborhood. I would actually like to redo all of those videos again. We start, we have a one of, we have two websites, small again real estate.com and then Grand Rapids Neighborhoods. And the neighborhood's website, we have all of those videos. We have an interactive map where you can look at Grand Rapids as a whole and also click on the different neighborhoods. So you see how they're all laid out.

And then you click on them and it gives us the video. it gives a little write-up from us. And then it also will show you like all the restaurants and the businesses that are in that neighborhood. And then there's a fun little tool that I mean, it's fun, but it's not 100% accurate. It's like what neighborhood do you belong in and you answer a few questions? Like, do you like dogs or cats or do you like going out at night or riding the bus? Like, and you answer these questions and it'll tell you like, hey, here's the top four neighborhoods that you should look at. Wow, that's a great idea.

Now, we used, they were using Boomtown before, but now I think Boomtown bought out KV Cor. So we have KV Corp, and they have it so that whole drip campaigns so that when they get those leads in, I don't think they do. Zillow, they have another source. And they get so many leads off the website, though. And so like we have so many people from moving all over the country here. We're the supposedly a number one city in the United States where people move to because we have. We have the four seasons. And so a lot of people from Michigan, like you and me, well, anyway, they move down here.

Sometimes they'll go to Florida and they'll move back. We call those the halfbacks. But anyway, it's all set up so that our KV Corps on the drip campaign, like if they start looking at houses that we can see that they're looking at in a specific town, well, then the drip already knows to put it over and it starts sending that town, all those videos on that town, fun things to do within that area. It's an amazing thing. And the lead on our team, he's the one who set all that up and it's brilliant.

So a lot like what you're doing. But the drip campaigns are really powerful with that. Yeah, we have a similar thing set up. And we also have a newsletter that we do for the entire city. And people can sign up on our website to like subscribe to the newsletter. And then we'll send out an email once a week with like things going on in Grand Rapids and that kind of thing. And I've actually reported a video every week for the last, man, it's got to be almost two and a half years now where here's three things going on in Grand Rapids this weekend. We got the Home and Garden show.

We got a hockey game. We got, you know, a play or a musical or a band in town. Like those are the things we talk about in those videos. And just giving back to the community is really the point behind that. And if people see that I'm giving back, then hopefully they want to support that. Yeah. What's the platform that you do? in that newsletter because that's a huge audience.

So it doesn't go to everybody. You have to sign up to be on the newsletter. So we're at like, I don't know, maybe just under a thousand subscribers to the newsletter. But so we use Beehive, which is a newsletter platform. Yeah, yeah. That's good to know. Okay. Well, boy, there's been lots of nuggets here.

I really appreciate all this, Mike. Any other tips you got for some realtors out there trying about building a team? I don't. And so like, that's a question that I get asked a lot. people think that's the only way to like get to the next level in the business. I would say you got to figure out what your goals are first. And is your goal to have a lot of overhead, a lot of responsibility? My goals personally are to change a lot of life.

So I want to have the people that are on my team to hit the goals that they want to hit in which they might, you know, everybody has different goals. And we want to help them individually get to where they want to get. and having those conversations. But for people building a team, I would just say, like, try to be on one first and learn a little bit. And then you're going to see the responsibilities

and maybe the things that you like and don't like or the mistakes that are made or the things that are working right. And you get to learn maybe firsthand. And then you've got to figure out, like, I think your first hire should be a really good admin, somebody that can take stuff off your plate so you can kind of focus on how,

helping the agents. I see a lot of people their first hires because they're free, right? Hiring agents. And then you got a producing or a producing agent and a new agent. And then it's like, how do you teach or be available for that person in the way that they need if you don't have somebody taking the administrative stuff off your plate? So your first hire should be an admin. And then you can't just hire anybody. I think that, you know, if a lot of brokers, right, will take anybody. And just because you have a real estate agent or a real estate license doesn't mean that you are a good real estate agent. And you should know what you're looking for. So as far as the type of agent you want, do you want full time or part time? Do you want people that share similar beliefs that

you have? Do you want people with big goals? Do you want people that, you know, don't really need to make money? They're just doing it because they need something to do and get them out of the house. Like, or is that the type of agent you want to build a team with? So get real clear on who is the right fit for your team before you have conversations about joining your team or not, right? And then there's a lot of different ways to build a team. You could have, there's a really successful team in my market who has basically one lead agent who does all of the buying and selling.

Then he has two assistants that are licensed that can show properties for him that are salaried, they're not commissioned. They might get bonuses on sales, but then he adds to admin that do the backend stuff. And he does pretty close to the same amount of business we do. And as far as volume, and it's because, you know, a lot of times people think that the only way to build a team

is having 25, 30 agents. Like, it can be done differently. You've got to figure out what you're looking for and make sure that you have a plan at whatever it is before you start doing it. So if you want a big team, then just put together a org chart so you can see like, hey, here's where I want to be. And even if you don't have the people for the circles, but figure out what type of team you want to run. Read a good book.

Millionaire real estate agent can help you figure some things out. I would say check that one out. But don't just start hiring agents and think that's how you build a team. I've seen there's other teams in my market that will hire anybody. And people know that. And you get that reputation of, you know, average or below average agents that are just there because free leads. And I don't think that if they'll join your team for leads, they'll leave for leads. And you got to make sure you provide more than that. So you got to have some loyalty there,

of course. And it has to work for their bottom line because it isn't about your growth. It's about your net. And in the culture that you're in, I think is important. I met a guy in a event I was at. I'm with DXP and I was at an event and he was a KW agent and he did something like his numbers were massive. And I said as far as the transactions and he was one guy. And I said, that's humanly impossible. How did you even do that? And then he told me the structure that you just described where everybody had a job. He said, I only talked to them, my clients, you know, like on Fridays and they knew.

We'd have the initial meeting. I'd tell them that these people are going to show them the house. those people's going to draft the contract. These people are going to handle the repairs. I'll talk to you on Fridays. You've got questions ahead of time. You can reach out to them. If you feel you're not getting the right answer, you reach out to me.

And man, he just did it. Now they were very high tickets because it was out in California too. But I've never thought like that. And I think that's what's important. Think different. Yeah. Like the way I'm structured is not like me being secondary on listings and secondary on buy sides. Like there's some teams in my market that don't put you on anywhere. And you're not on either

side of that transaction. And then, you know, I think agents, part of being a real estate agent for a lot of people is recognition and also the compensation. And not everybody needs that, but those who do, I want to make sure we're offering it to them. Yeah, I agree. It's been great, Mike. I really appreciate it. You got some great nuggets here. And I want to thank you for being on. And any last minute words? You got it for. Last minute word?

I can't really think of anything. So it's been great to be on the podcast. I, you know, I'm in West Michigan, Grand Rapids area. If you have any referrals, please send them my way. If you have questions about building a team or would like me on your podcast, reach out. Follow us on YouTube, Smalligan Real Estate on pretty much every platform. And then Smalligan, just Smalligan on my personal stuff. So there's lots of places you can find us online.

But if I can be a resource, I'd like. up to be heading to family reunion, which is a Keller William event. So in two weeks. So that should be a lot of fun and get to meet more people. But I think that's the greatest part about this business is there are a lot of people that are willing to share and give you ideas and help you build your business that believe that we're in a business and culture of abundance and that there isn't a limited amount of business out there. And we can share and give ideas and talk about our wins and our losses and just be good humans and encourage other people to do well. So yeah.

So live in abundance. And that's my final word. Live in abundance. Perfect. And we'll have all his information in the description below so you'll be able to reach out to him if you didn't get it quickly. So he'll be able to reach him. And he's abundance of information.

Great guy to know. Appreciate you so much. And thanks everybody. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks, Kathy. So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real Estate. Riches wasn't that great? I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below, share it with everybody, make some comments. We really find that invaluable.

And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more, let's schedule a business strategy call. I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can't empower each other. That would be great. So until next time, signing up, hope to see you on the next one.